Friday, July 31, 2015

Open source is critical to everything that we do, says Gee Rittenhouse, Senior VP and General Manager of Cisco's Cloud and Virtualization Group.

Three aspects of open source really stand out: first, it ensures that there is no vendor lock-in; second, it accelerates time-to-market; and third, it enables ecosystem communities to emerge. Cisco believes Open Daylight fits into this process at the controller layer.

Thursday, July 30, 2015

Facebook posted a video tour of its Connectivity Lab, showcasing progress it has made in developing an ultralight drone aircraft that will stay aloft for three months at a time at altitudes of 30km.

The project aims to deliver Internet services in regions that are currently underserved. The plan is to use a 100 Gbps free-space laser for backhaul link from aircraft to the ground. Wi-Fi towers on the ground will provide local coverage. Test flights are expected to begin later this year.

The OZO, which it the first in a planned portfolio of digital media solutions from Nokia Technologies, was conceived at the company's R&D facilities in Tampere, Finland. It captures stereoscopic 3D video through eight (8) synchronized global shutter sensors and spatial audio through eight (8) integrated microphones. Software built for OZO enables real-time 3D viewing.

OZO's filmed content can be published for commercially available VR viewing hardware such as head mounted displays (HMDs), with immersive, full 360-degree imaging and spatially accurate original sound.

Global Capacity has expanded the reach of its One Marketplace network with the activation of a metropolitan fiber ring in the Washington, D.C. area.

The 54-mile diversely routed fiber ring will interconnect the company’s Points of Presence(PoP) located within the Level 3 1755 Old Meadow Road, McLean, VA facility and the Equinix Ashburn, VA data center. The Washington, D.C. area has long been a major Internet and network exchange point and the Ashburn data center is a critical east coast hub for Cloud and application service providers, where through a direct Ethernet connection, One Marketplace is connected into the Equinix Cloud Exchange.

"We believe that Global Capacity will have a positive impact on the business community in the Washington, D.C. market,” says Ben Edmond, Chief Revenue Officer of Global Capacity.

“Global Capacity is aggressively investing in expanding metro fiber rings in several key markets because bandwidth consumption is on the rise and with our One Marketplace, customers gain reliable, more cost effective data connectivity services to meet their growing business needs.”

The IEEE Standards Association (IEEE-SA) has approved a new 802.21d standard for local and Metropolitan Area Networks.

IEEE 802.21d extends the standard’s framework for improving users’ experience for mobile devices by facilitating secure, automated handover between IEEE 802® networks, as well as between IEEE 802 and cellular networks. It supports a secure Multicast Group Management capability applicable to Advance Metering Infrastructure (AMI) networks, where thousands of nodes require periodic configuration update, handover and re-keying in failover and failback scenarios. The standard is also applicable to home networking reliant on secure signaling and keying of a growing number of connected devices, as well as to service providers and operators by providing a means for secure and efficient device configuration and management.

iBasis, which is a division of KPN, added more than 100 LTE destinations in the first half of the year. The iBasis Global IPX network footprint now includes more than 290 LTE network destinations.

According to the Global Mobile Supplier Association (GSA), 422 operators have commercially launched LTE networks in 143 countries, as of July 2015, and 677 operators are investing in LTE across 181 countries. iBasis’ global LTE Roaming footprint is essential to enabling MNOs to capture new revenue opportunities from LTE Roaming offerings.

iBasis’ mobile operator customers can also have immediate visibility into their roaming traffic via InVision, iBasis’ simple-to-use but sophisticated quality monitoring and management tool. The advanced analytics help mobile operators keep control over their roaming business and enhance end-user experience.

Frontier Communications introduced a wholesale Ethernet Internet Access (EIA) service that enables carriers to offer customers Internet access within Frontier’s footprint. Wholesale EIA will be sold through the Carrier channel but will be equivalent to the retail offering by including a package of the Ethernet access circuit and Internet port and bandwidth tiers ranging from 1Mbps to 1Gbps.

Frontier recently released Ethernet Virtual Private Line (EVPL) Silver, Gold and Platinum enhancements to the Frontier Ethernet Solutions product portfolio. The company also plans to release a Regional Ethernet ENNI in the coming months, coupled with the ability to support 10Gbps interfaces.

“This is the next step in the growth of our Wholesale product portfolio,” said Rod Imbriani, Vice President of Product Marketing. “We understand the value of building a complete product suite and the ability to deliver and support those products with industry-leading results.”

"I am particularly pleased by Nokia Networks, which delivered improved performance overall, despite a year-on-year decline in net sales on a constant currency basis. Software sales were up significantly; core networking sales improved; we saw a reduced impact of strategic entry deals; Global Services had one of its best quarters in the history of the company; and costs remained well under control," stated Rajeev Sure, Nokia's President and CEO.

A10 Networks reported total revenue for the second quarter of $47.5 million, compared with $45.1 million in the second quarter of 2014. On a GAAP basis, A10 Networks reported a net loss for the second quarter 2015 of $10.0 million or $0.16 per share, compared with a net loss of $1.3 million or $0.02 per share in the second quarter of 2014. Non-GAAP net loss for the second quarter of 2015 was $5.3 million or $0.09 per share.

“Our solid second quarter results are a result of A10’s growing business momentum and improved execution across our operations,” said Lee Chen, president and chief executive officer of A10 Networks. “We achieved record revenue of $47.5 million, delivered record enterprise revenue, drove a significant sequential improvement in the bottom-line and generated positive cash flow from operations.

Wednesday, July 29, 2015

Michel Combes will step down as CEO of Alcatel-Lucent, effective September 1, as the company prepares for its merger with Nokia Networks.

For the duration of the transition period, Philippe Camus, currently Chairman of the Board of Directors, will become Chairman and Interim CEO. Jean-Cyril Spinetta is appointed Lead Director of the Board. Philippe Guillemot, Chief Operating Officer, will be in charge of leading the operational management of the group. Jean Raby, Chief Finance and Legal Officer, will be responsible for completing the proposed transaction with Nokia. Philippe Guillemot and Basil Alwan, President of the IP Routing & Transport business line, will jointly lead the integration team.

Commenting on the Board’s decision, Philippe Camus said: “In order to achieve the objectives of this transition period and ensure the successful integration with Nokia, I will be supported for operational responsibilities by Philippe Guillemot who, in addition to leading execution of The Shift Plan, will also be in charge of the Executive Committee and will co-lead the integration process with Basil Alwan. Jean Raby will ensure the closure of the intended transaction in the best interests of the Alcatel-Lucent shareholders.”

In February 2013, Alcatel-Lucent’s Board of Directors named Michel Combes as the company’s new Chief Executive Officer. Previously, Michel Combes was CEO of Vodafone Europe and a Board member of Vodafone PLC. During his career, he has held the positions of Chairman and CEO of TDF as well as Chief Financial Officer and Senior Executive Vice President of France Telecom.

Commenting on the results, Michel Combes, CEO of Alcatel-Lucent, said: “Our second quarter 2015 results represent a significant milestone for Alcatel-Lucent, reflecting the first Q2 of free cash flow generation since the merger of Alcatel and Lucent in 2006. Alcatel-Lucent’s financial results for the first half of 2015 clearly show that the company has delivered on the key objectives of The Shift Plan, launched two years ago. The company is now well on track to complete its turnaround by the end of the year.

Core Networking

Core Networking segment revenues were Euro 1,675 million in Q2 2015, up 22% year-over-year at actual rates and up 10% at constant rates.

IP Routing revenues were Euro 659 million in Q2 2015, an increase of 17% at actual rates and 3% at constant rates, when compared to Q2 2014. The business witnessed double-digit growth in EMEA and CALA, resilience in North America and declines in APAC driven by a continued spending pause in Japan. Revenues from non-telco customers grew at a double-digit pace year-over-year, at constant exchange rates.

7950 XRS IP Core router saw strong year-over-year revenue growth and registered 5 new wins in Q2, for a total of 44 wins to date.

Continued momentum in virtualized routing both in and outside the telecom service provider space with 8 new customers for the Virtualized Service Router (VSR) in Q2 2015, bringing the total to 16 deployments and over 75 trials underway, including our NFV trial with Telefonica which includes our VSR.

Nuage added 5 new customers, bringing the total to 25 wins, including China Mobile, and announced collaborations with both Arista and Mirantis as part of Nuage Networks ecosystem program. Nuage also introduced the Virtualized Services Assurance Platform (VSAP), which addresses the need for visibility and correlation between the virtual networks for applications and workloads and the physical connectivity provided by the datacenter network infrastructure.

Access segment revenues were Euro 1,772 million in Q2 2015, a decrease of 7% year-over-year at actual rates and a decrease of 20% at constant rates. In Q2 2015, segment operating income was Euro 23 million, compared to a segment operating income of Euro 11 million in Q2 2014, reflecting improvements from both Wireless and Managed Services, in addition to continued double-digit margin contribution from Fixed Access.

Wireless Access revenues were Euro 1,148 million, a year-on-year decrease of 12% at actual rates and 27% at constant rates. Marked by a difficult comparison base in the year-ago quarter, the sales decline was driven by lower spending in the US and project timing in China.

Oracle Communications released a new version of its operational support system (OSS) suite to help communications service providers (CSPs) design services spanning physical and virtual networks. The suite is also designed to help streamline the operational delivery of customer orders—including high-growth B2B and wholesale orders—enabling CSPs to capitalize on the opportunities of a network function virtualization (NFV)-driven communications world.

The new version of the Oracle Communications OSS suite includes updates to several products, including Oracle Communications Design Studio, Oracle Communications Order and Service Management, Oracle Communications Unified Inventory Management, Oracle Communications ASAP, Oracle Communications IP Service Activator, Oracle Communications Network Integrity, and Oracle Communications Network Intelligence. It is integrated and optimized to work with the Oracle Cloud Platform, Oracle Database 12c, and Oracle Fusion Middleware 12c, improving performance, manageability, and security and enabling future OSS suite deployments in the cloud as well as on premises.

Key capabilities of the new OSS suite:

Efficiently deliver and manage contemporary network-based B2B services: the upgraded OSS suite enhances the visual modeling, design, and configuration of packet-based network connectivity, including built-in support for MEF’s Carrier Ethernet 2.0 services such as E-Line and E-LAN, and the ability to efficiently process large B2B or wholesale orders up to 6,000 line items per order. The suite also supports agile orchestration and delivery of Carrier Ethernet 2.0 services across multiple network operators, aligning with the MEF Lifecycle Service Orchestration architecture recently demonstrated at TM Forum Live.

Seamlessly support the design and delivery of services on physical, virtual, and hybrid networks: Oracle Communications provides CSPs with a single, integrated, end-to-end design environment spanning business, operations, and network processes that, in conjunction with Oracle Communications Network Service Orchestration Solution, extends the OSS suite to deliver services on virtual and hybrid networks. This helps to ensure that CSPs avoid cumbersome or fragmented design approaches and can achieve not just network agility, but actual business agility.

Accelerate solution design in collaboration with existing provisioning systems: With a new catalog export capability, CSPs can holistically design their fulfillment solution once and then propagate the design to any number of participating systems, from enterprise catalogs to specialized provisioning systems. This end-to-end design approach enables faster and more efficient solution design by reducing manual steps in the process.

Efficiently manage exceptions in order processing: The upgraded OSS suite includes new tools to more effectively process complex orders and manage exceptions during order processing, including enhancements to order jeopardy and fallout management and batch order changes. These new tools can help CSPs diagnose and resolve issues faster without requiring custom modeling or specialist skills, in turn reducing operational costs and improving the customer experience.

“As CSPs continue to standardize and virtualize their networks, agility in service design and automation in service delivery have become major focus areas—which is putting a spotlight on OSS to rapidly launch and efficiently deliver innovative services on an increasingly dynamic network,” said Doug Suriano, senior vice president and general manager, Oracle Communications. “This release of the Oracle Communications OSS suite accelerates design agility, provides support for the latest network technologies, and further simplifies network-based B2B service delivery in practice, supporting our commitment to delivering innovative OSS solutions in an increasingly virtualized communications world.”

Linking real-time machine condition monitoring with IBM asset management to monitor everything from the health of household appliances to wheels on a railroad car.

Spotting trends and obtaining solutions to common problems through graphical representation of historical and real-time data from IoT devices.

“For years, companies have been building their machine-to-machine and IoT applications essentially from scratch. IBM developerWorks Recipes enables companies to leverage the hard lessons learned by other developers in order to simplify the process – a goal to which MultiTech has been committed for more than 40 years,” said Daniel Quant, Vice President of Product Management, MultiTech Systems. “IBM is helping to enable us and our customers to connect devices quickly and with security features to the IBM Cloud – with the ultimate goal of transforming our business processes and efficiencies.”

Facebook users are spending an average 46 minutes per day on the site (not including WhatsApp). More than 700 million users are using Messenger.

Second Quarter 2015 Operational Highlights

Daily active users (DAUs) - DAUs were 968 million on average for June 2015, an increase of 17% year-over-year.

Mobile DAUs - Mobile DAUs were 844 million on average for June 2015, an increase of 29% year-over-year.

Monthly active users (MAUs) - MAUs were 1.49 billion as of June 30, 2015, an increase of 13% year-over-year.

Mobile MAUs - Mobile MAUs were 1.31 billion as of June 30, 2015, an increase of 23% year-over-year.

Instagram MAUs - Instagram MAUs were 300 million in June

Messenger MAUs - Messenger MAUs were 700 million in June

WhatsApp MAUs - WhatsApp MAUs were 800 million in June

Capital expenditures - Capital expenditures for the second quarter of 2015 were $549 million.

On a conference call, Facebook executives said 2015 is a year of strategic building with CAPEX guidance in the $2.5 - $3.0 billion range, up from $1.8 billion in 2014, including investments in data centers, servers, and networks.

Quintillion Subsea Holdings awarded a turnkey contract to Alcatel-Lucent for the design and construction of a submarine cable system in Alaska from Prudhoe Bay to Nome.

The system will offer a unique route to bring reliable, affordable high-speed broadband access to the North Slope of Alaska and will bridge the digital divide in an area of Alaska where bandwidth is currently still limited.

It will offer a capacity of at least 10 terabits-per-second per fiber pair. The system will consist of three fiber pairs capable of carrying 100 wavelengths, each of which can support 100 Gbps of data capacity. Phase 1 will be a 1,850 km segment linking the Alaskan communities of Nome, Kotzebue, Wainwright, Point Hope, Barrow, and Prudhoe Bay and will provide for future extensions to Asia and Europe. Scheduled for completion by the end of 2016, Phase 1 will incorporate advanced routing and burial techniques to protect the cable and enhance the integrity of the system.

President Obama issued an Executive Order establishing the National Strategic Computing Initiative (NSCI), which aims to bolster the development and deployment of high-performance computing (HPS) systems.

The initiative represents a "coordinated research, development, and deployment strategy will draw on the strengths of departments and agencies to move the Federal government into a position that sharpens, develops, and streamlines a wide range of new 21st century applications. It is designed to advance core technologies to solve difficult computational problems and foster increased use of the new capabilities in the public and private sectors.

The National Strategic Computing Initiative has five strategic themes.

Create systems that can apply exaflops of computing power to exabytes of data.

Tuesday, July 28, 2015

Intel and Micron Technology have developed a non-volatile memory that is up to 1,000 times faster and has up to 1,000 times greater endurance than NAND, and is 10 times denser than conventional memory.

The 3D XPoint technology, which is now entering production, is described as the first new memory category since the introduction of NAND flash in 1989.

"For decades, the industry has searched for ways to reduce the lag time between the processor and data to allow much faster analysis," said Rob Crooke, senior vice president and general manager of Intel's Non-Volatile Memory Solutions Group. "This new class of non-volatile memory achieves this goal and brings game-changing performance to memory and storage solutions."

"One of the most significant hurdles in modern computing is the time it takes the processor to reach data on long-term storage," said Mark Adams, president of Micron. "This new class of non-volatile memory is a revolutionary technology that allows for quick access to enormous data sets and enables entirely new applications."

Intel said the 3D XPoint technology follows more than a decade of research and development. The innovative, transistor-less cross point architecture creates a three-dimensional checkerboard where memory cells sit at the intersection of word lines and bit lines, allowing the cells to be addressed individually. As a result, data can be written and read in small sizes, leading to faster and more efficient read/write processes.

In March 2015, Intel and Micron Technology announced availability of their 3D NAND technology, the world's highest-density flash memory, for use in data center servers, laptops, tablets and mobile devices.

The new 3D NAND technology, which was jointly developed by Intel and Micron, stacks layers of data storage cells vertically to create storage devices with three times higher capacity than competing NAND technologies. The companies have been able to package up to 48GB of NAND per die — enabling three-fourths of a terabyte to fit in a single fingertip-sized package. A 256Gb MLC version of 3D NAND currently is sampling with select partners, and a 384Gb TLC design will be sampling later this spring.

Cyber CSF, founded in 2012, is Indonesia's largest data center service provider. It operates a high-quality facility equipped for 24 MVA of power and 2,800 racks in 7,700 square meters of space in the heart of Jakarta.

NTT Com, in addition to an existing point-of-presence (PoP) for its Global IP Network at the Cyber CSF data center, plans to establish a PoP for its Arcstar Universal One(tm) VPN network in October, leveraging the licenses it obtained as the first foreign carrier authorized to operate closed networks in Indonesia through its joint venture subsidiary, PT. NTT Indonesia.

Currently, PT. NTT Indonesia is building a domestic fiber network that will connect its new data center with other major data centers in suburban Jakarta, as well as industrial parks and office buildings.http://www.ntt.co.jp

Pluribus Networks has formed a technology and marketing agreement with Appcito, makers of scalable Private Cloud based application services, such as load balancing, application traffic visibility and analytics and comprehensive application security including Web Application Firewall and DDoS detection.

The agreement enables end users to purchase and deploy Appcito’s application delivery solution upon the Pluribus Networks connectivity fabric itself, dramatically simplifying the deployment of advanced services, reducing the costs and extending advanced traffic management capabilities across the entire infrastructure.

“The public cloud has been developed to support the needs of modern computing, which emphasize the need to bring new services online quickly and securely in direct support of the fast-moving business. We enable organizations to create their own private clouds in the same way. Our SDN platform offers all of the same agility, adaptability, application awareness and security found in public offerings, but at a fraction of the cost, and goes far beyond the mere separation of control and data planes, as seen in other competitive SDN offerings,” said Kumar Srikantan, CEO of Pluribus Networks. “Most importantly, it’s a true open and scalable platform onto which higher-layer services can be deployed. Working together with Appcito, we are jointly demonstrating the marriage of our platform with their leading-edge load-balancing and security services. The combination of upper layer networking services with an open, extensible, and secure networking foundation makes the network more relevant to applications and to the business itself.”

“Today’s cloud computing has the same network challenges that existed in the past but now requires new cloud-adapted solution architectures and capacities in order to support and secure modern applications effectively,” said Peter Christy, Research Director, 451 Research. “Appcito and Pluribus each are excellent examples of forward-looking, cloud-centric products which do just this, and the integration of the two is proof that upper-level network services and the foundational network fabric can be married so that the combination is more than just the sum of the parts.”

Mark Templeton has decided to step down as president and CEO of Citrix Systems. He has served in that position since 1998. The Citrix Board has initiated a CEO search process and has retained Heidrick & Struggles to assist with the process of identifying and evaluating candidates.

Citrix also announced a cooperation agreement with Elliott Management Corporation, an investment firm whose affiliated funds own approximately 7.5 percent of the company’s common stock. Elliott’s Jesse Cohn has been appointed to the Citrix board of directors to replace Asiff Hirji who has decided to step down from the company's board, effective immediately. In addition, as part of its continuing board evolution process, the company will commence a search for an additional independent board member, mutually agreeable to Citrix and Elliott, who will replace a current board member when appointed. In addition, Elliott and certain of its affiliates have agreed to customary standstill, voting and other provisions for a period of at least a year. Citrix has also formed an operations committee, which will work closely with the company’s management team on a comprehensive operational review focusing on improving Citrix’s margins, profitability and capital structure.

Elliot Management Corp. published an open letter to the Board of Directors of Citrix, saying it believes the company can achieve a notable increase in shareholder value by implementing a new management plan and undertaking structural reforms.

Elliot currently holds 7.1% of Citrix Systems' stock.

Specifically, Elliot said it believes that Citrix can achieve a stock price of $90 ~ $100+ per share by the end of 2016, which represents a rise of 50%, by improving its operational performance given that it great products in strong markets. One area of concern for Elliot is the company's cost structure, which has grown faster than revenues.

Elliot, which also criticized Citrix's product portfolio as too broad, is presenting a new operating plan for the company.

Radisys reported consolidated revenue of $47.0 million for Q2 2015, and non-GAAP earnings per share of $0.03, an increase of $0.10 year-on-year.

For the second quarter of 2015, Software-Systems revenue was $14.2 million, compared to $9.7 million in the prior quarter and $10.4 million in the second quarter of 2014, representing increases of 46% and 36%, respectively. Revenue growth was primarily driven by accelerating MediaEngine deployments in support of VoLTE rollouts, including partial delivery of the $11M order noted above, and revenue tied to acceptance of FlowEngine lab systems.

Embedded Products revenue was $32.9 million, compared to $39.0 million in the prior quarter and $39.6 million in the second quarter of 2014. While revenue was down both sequentially and year-on-year largely resulting from legacy end-of-life product transitions, Embedded Products revenue came in above expectations due to continued strength from the segment’s core customer base.

“In the second quarter, we continued to generate further momentum across our business, specifically within Software-Systems with strong revenue growth both sequentially and year-on-year,” said Brian Bronson, Radisys President and CEO. “Most notably, during the quarter we received an $11 million follow-on order from a large Asian carrier that selected our MediaEngine platform to enable all media processing in its VoLTE rollout. Also strategically significant during the quarter was the acceptance of additional FlowEngine lab units by the large North American carrier we are engaged with representing another tangible proof point for our new products. We continue to expect initial orders from this carrier for commercial deployments later in the second half of 2015.”

Broadcom said its integrated "TruFlow" flow processing can double network throughput and provide up to a 50 percent increase in application performance compared to a software-only solution. The BCM57300 provides hardware-based, congestion notification responses that are 5,000x faster than traditional software-based approaches. When combined with StrataXGS switches, the notification enable data centers to avoid network congestion before it happens.

Software Defined Networking: TruFlow implements the fundamental SDN protocol constructs of classification/match/action processing in hardware, including the latest OpenFlow standard. Distributing SDN protocols into the BCM57300 enables cloud operators to reap the benefits of SDN in their data centers with a flexible, scalable and dynamic network.

Low power: <5w li="">

Low chip latency: 1.5-µs round trip

Dual-Port 10/25G and single-port 40/50G

Industry's smallest (14x14 mm) 25/50G Controller package

Integrated base management controller (BMC)

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"NetXtreme C-Series raises the bar for Ethernet controllers and enables a cost-effective path from 10G to 25G," said Rajiv Ramaswami, Broadcom Executive Vice President and General Manager, Infrastructure & Networking Group. "Pushing the 25/50G Ethernet specification, which Broadcom defined and co-founded as an industry standard, to the server endpoint solidifies Broadcom's end-to-end offering."

Broadcom will be supplyting offers two families of standard adapter cards based on its BCM57300 NetXtreme C-Series of Ethernet controllers: PCIe NIC and OCP Mezzanine.

In April 2015, Broadcom began sampling the next-generation of its StrataXGS Trident Ethernet switching silicon, which has been optimized to meet the bandwidth, scalability and efficiency demands of 10GbE virtualized data centers. The new silicon offers 1.28 terabit per second (Tbps) switching performance, 30 percent lower power and double the performance for data center virtualization overlays, such as VXLAN.

The 28 nanometer (nm) Trident-II+ Series, which provides a drop-in power and efficiency improvement over the previous version, brings a number of features for network virtualization, including single-pass VXLAN routing that doubles gateway performance in all network topologies, as well as support for pre-standard GENEVE overlays.

As a complement to Broadcom's latest StrataXGS Tomahawk and StrataDNX switch SoCs, the Trident II+ Series provides 100GbE connections to the spine layer and between racks, while supporting 10GbE connections to the servers in enterprise and private cloud deployments.

In September 2014, Broadcom introduced its next-generation, StrataXGS "Tomahawk" switch, packing 2 Tbps of switching performance in a single chip that is capable of supporting 32 ports of 100 Gigabit Ethernet, 64 ports of 40GE/50GE or 128 ports of 25GE.

The new chip, which represents the 7th generation of Broadcom Ethernet switching silicon, is designed for the programmable fabrics needed in next-gen, cloud-scale data centers.

The StrataXGS Tomahawk Series is powered by more than 7 billion integrated transistors in 28nm. It supports new 25GE and 50GE protocol standards, and is the first chip to scale to 32-ports of 100G on a single device.

Significantly, Tomahawk implements Broadcom's FLEXGS and Smart-Flow technology, enabling the switch to be software configured for specific policies while preserving deterministic latency. The new design brings a 12X increase in application policy scale compared to previous generation switches, along with increased flexibility of packet lookups and key generation, and rich load balancing and traffic redirection controls. This supports an extensive suite of user configurable functions for flow processing, security, network virtualization, measurement/monitoring, congestion management and traffic engineering.In May 015, Avago Technologies agreed to acquire Broadcom for $17 billion in cash consideration and the economic equivalent of approximately 140 million Avago ordinary shares. -- an implied value for the total transaction of $37 billion. The merger will create the third largest global semiconductor company with strong presence in wired infrastructure, wireless infrastructure, enterprise storage, ASICs, PHYs, Ethernet switching silicon and set-top box silicon. It will have combined annual revenues of approximately $15 billion and $77 billion in enterprise value.

Chuck Robbins has officially taken over as CEO of Cisco, replacing John Chambers who held the position since January 1995. July 26th marked the end of Cisco's fiscal year.

Robbins joined Cisco in 1997 and most recently served as Cisco’s senior vice president of worldwide operations, leading the company’s global sales and partner team that drives $47B in business for the company.

Cisco also announced the appointments of Zorawar Biri Singh as Chief Technology Officer and Kevin Bandy as Cisco’s first Chief Digital Officer.

Most recently, Biri Singh was a venture partner at Khosla Ventures, where he focused on enterprise IT software, predictive data analytics, cloud platforms and infrastructure investments. Previously, he was senior vice president and general manager of Hewlett Packard’s (HP) cloud business, where he oversaw the company’s global cloud portfolio and open source efforts. Prior to HP, Biri led corporate strategy and portfolio solutions as vice president of cloud computing at IBM and served as a member of the executive team that launched IBM’s cloud business unit in 2010.

Kevin Bandy previously was Senior Vice President, Enterprise Transformation at Salesforce.com, where he was responsible for growth and market expansion by making Salesforce.com the foundation on which companies reengineer their front office operations. Prior to joining Salesforce.com Bandy was the principle of Rhea Springs LLC, a strategy consultancy firm founded to work in a personal advisory manner with Fortune 500 senior leadership.

The Research Foundation for the State University of New York (RF SUNY) has been chosen to lead a new Manufacturing Innovation Institute to advance U.S. leadership in the manufacturing integrated photonics.

Specifically, the Department of Defense is awarding the new Manufacturing Innovation Institute for Integrated Photonics to a consortium of 124 companies, nonprofits, and universities led by RF SUNY. With a total investment of over $610 million—$110 million in federal funds, and more than $500 million in non-federal contributions—the announcement marks the largest public-private commitment to date for a manufacturing institute launched in the United States. The new institute will be based in Rochester, New York -- the long term home of Eastman Kodak. It mission iss to focus on cutting-edge research in integrated photonics — using multiple units of light, on a single platform, to improve the performance and reliability of telecommunications, radar, lasers, and other technologies.

The new photonics institute is the sixth of nine announced as part of the National Network of Manufacturing Institutes (NNMI).

Ericsson and SK Telecom have signed agreed to collaborate on the development of a 5G core network that deploys network slicing technology. The idea behind slicing is to use logical instead of physical resources to provide networks on an as-a-service basis. The instantiation of the network slicing will use the Ericsson Virtual Evolved Packet Core solution.

The companies are building a test bed using Ericsson’s HDS 8000 Hyperscale Datacenter System and its Regional Cloud Lab,which is distributed across four sites in North East Asia including Anyang in South Korea, Beijing and Shanghai in China, and Tokyo in Japan.

“Virtual network architecture, including network slicing, is critical to supporting new services in the era of 5G. We will build an optimal network for a wide array of services from the overall end-to-end standpoint, and pioneer the evolution of innovative networks,” says Alex Jinsung Choi, Chief Technology Officer at SK Telecom.

“Network slicing, based on virtual evolved packet core, is an important part of the technology evolution of 5G, supporting operators with a new, broader set of services. It is important that we work together in the industry on this journey”, says Ulf Ewaldsson, CTO, Ericsson.

The installation uses 200G per 50GHz DWDM channels, covering diverse paths between Slough, to the West of London, through to London Docklands in the East. The companies said a cloud customer is now using the network to put into production 1.2 Tbps of 100GE services, bringing the cloud customer's total lit capacity across the euNetworks footprint to in excess of 6 Tbps and available capacity to around 40 Tbps.

euNetworks has been working closely with its customer base of high bandwidth users and has developed a solution named euSpectrum to cater to their specific needs. euSpectrum delivers DWDM channels on euNetworks’ Pan European DWDM backbone, and provides customers, such as cloud providers, with the option to take large chunks of capacity between cities – effectively building a multi-Terabit backbone. With 13 owned and operated fibre based metropolitan networks, euNetworks can extend this solution to over 260 data centres utilising this city based footprint.

“Our euSpectrum bandwidth solution and position as the leading data centre connectivity provider in Europe offers a unique and highly scalable networking solution to our customers,” said Brady Rafuse, Chief Executive Officer of euNetworks. “We are working with some of the world’s biggest consumers of bandwidth, shaping our network for their growing needs. The nature of our business is such that our network designs are driven exclusively by the needs of our customers. We believe we are one of the leading European providers in the 100G bandwidth market today and with this important milestone of adding 200G capability to the network, we continue to offer our customers the next step in high bandwidth network scalability.”

Huawei and NTT DOCOMO performed a live demonstration of the co-channel coexistence between Licensed-Assisted Access (LAA) and Wi-Fi systems.

The demo, which occurred at the 5G Tokyo Bay Summit 2015 held at the DOCOMO R&D Center in Yokosuka, Kanagawa, showed LAA operating on a 5GHz unlicensed band.

Huawei said results indicated that with the assistance of a key co-existing technology named Listen-Before-Talk (LBT), LAA is able to co-exist adequately with a neighboring Wi-Fi system, while maintaining most of the performance advantages of LTE.

Friday, July 24, 2015

AT&T completed its acquisition of DIRECTV, making it the largest pay TV provider in the United States and the world, providing service to more than 26 million customers in the United States and more than 191 million customers in Latin America, including Mexico and the Caribbean. Additionally, AT&T has more than 132 million wireless subscribers and connections in the U.S. and Mexico; offers 4G LTE mobile coverage to nearly 310 million people in the U.S.; covers 57 million U.S. customer locations with high-speed Internet; and has nearly 16 million subscribers to its high-speed Internet service.

DIRECTV shareholders received 1.892 shares of AT&T common stock, in addition to $28.50 in cash, per share of DIRECTV.

AT&T said the DIRECTV acquisition significantly diversifies itsrevenue mix, products, geographies and customer bases. As a result of this acquisition, as well as AT&T’s acquisition of Iusacell and Nextel Mexico, AT&T expects that, by the end of 2015, its largest revenue streams will be, in descending order: Business Solutions (both wireless and wireline); Entertainment & Internet; Consumer Mobility; and International Mobility and Video.

“Combining DIRECTV with AT&T is all about giving customers more choices for great video entertainment integrated with mobile and high-speed Internet service,” said Randall Stephenson, AT&T chairman and CEO. “We’ll now be able to meet consumers’ future entertainment preferences, whether they want traditional TV service with premier programming, their favorite content on a mobile device, or video streamed over the Internet to any screen.

“This transaction allows us to significantly expand our high-speed Internet service to reach millions more households, which is a perfect complement to our coast-to-coast TV and mobile coverage,” Stephenson said. “We’re now a fundamentally different company with a diversified set of capabilities and businesses that set us apart from the competition.”

In approving the deal, the FCC imposed a number of conditions that will extend for four years, including:

Fiber to the Premises (FTTP) Deployment. Recognizing that the merger reduces AT&T-DIRECTV’s incentive to deploy FTTP service, the Commission adopts as a condition of this merger the expansion of FTTP service to 12.5 million customer locations. This condition also responds to the harm of the loss of a video competitor in areas where AT&T and DIRECTV had directly competed before the merger by providing a pathway for increased competition from services that rely on broadband Internet to deliver video.

Gigabit Service to E-rate Eligible Schools and Libraries. In addition, to ensure that schools and libraries also benefit from expanded fiber deployment to consumers and institutions, the Commission is also requiring AT&T-DIRECTV to offer gigabit service to any E-rate eligible school or library where AT&T-DIRECTV deploys FTTP service.

Non-Discriminatory Usage-Based Practices. Recognizing that AT&T is the only major ISP that applies “data caps” across the board to all of its fixed broadband customers and that this merger increases the incentive of AT&T-DIRECTV to use strategies that limit consumers’ access to online video distribution services in order to favor its own video services, the Commission requires AT&T-DIRECTV, as a condition of this merger, to refrain from imposing discriminatory usage-based allowances or other discriminatory retail terms and conditions on its broadband Internet service.

Internet Interconnection Disclosure Requirements. Recognizing the importance of interconnection to the operation of online video services, the Commission also requires as a condition of this merger that AT&T-DIRECTV submit its Internet interconnection agreements so that the Commission may monitor the terms of such agreements to determine whether AT&T-DIRECTV is denying or impeding access to its networks in anticompetitive ways through the terms of these agreements.

Discounted Broadband Services for Low-Income Subscribers. While finding that the availability of better and lower priced bundles of video and broadband service is a potential benefit of the merger, the Commission also concludes that the public interest requires us to ensure that a bundle of video and broadband services is not the only competitive choice for low-income subscribers who may not be able to afford bundled services. The Commission accordingly requires as a condition of the merger that AT&T-DIRECTV make available an affordable, low-price standalone broadband service to low-income consumers in its broadband service area.

Compliance Program and Reporting. Given the important role that these conditions serve in securing the public interest benefits of the merger, the Commission requiresthat AT&T-DIRECTV retain both an internal company compliance officer and an independent, external compliance officer that will report and monitor, respectively, the combined entity’s compliance with all conditions of the merger.

Some other notes on the transaction:

AT&T announced that John Stankey will be CEO of AT&T Entertainment & Internet Services, responsible for leading its combined DIRECTV and AT&T Home Solutions operations. Stankey will report to Stephenson. DIRECTV President, Chairman and CEO Mike White announced his plans to retire.

AT&T is also developing unique video offerings for consumers through, among other initiatives, its Otter Media joint venture with The Chernin Group. The joint venture was established to invest in, acquire and launch over-the-top (OTT) video services. This includes its purchase of a majority stake in Fullscreen, a global online media company that works with more than 50,000 content creators who engage 450 million subscribers and generate 4 billion monthly views.

DIRECTV operates a fleet of twelve geosynchronous satellites, including eleven owned satellites
and one leased satellite. These include six Ku-Band satellites at the following orbital locations: 101 WL (three), 110
WL (one), 119 WL (one), 95 WL (one-leased), and six Ka-Band satellites at 99 WL (three) and
103 WL (three) orbital locations.
The company has contracted for the construction and launch of one new satellite, D15, which is to launch in 2015 and provide additional HD, replacement and backup capacity

At its inaugural Data Technology (DT) event this week in Beijing. Alibaba's Aliyun division announced its Data Protection Pact - a pledge to customers and partners to protect the privacy and integrity of their data.

Here is Aliyun's statement to the technology industry and the entire society:

Customers, such as individual developers, companies, governments, and social institutions, have absolute ownership over any and all data generated on the Alibaba Cloud Computing (Aliyun) platform, including the rights to freely and safely access, share, exchange, transfer or delete their data at any time.

Customers have the right to select whatever services they choose to securely process their data. This data cannot in any way be altered or transferred by Alibaba Cloud Computing (Aliyun).

As such that banks are obligated to protect clients' financial assets, the obligation also falls on Alibaba Cloud Computing (Aliyun) to protect our customers' data. It is the responsibility and duty of Alibaba Cloud Computing (Aliyun) to establish a set of strict management, control and internal audit systems, as well as strive to continuously improve our threat protection, disaster recovery and other capabilities to strengthen the protection we offer to customers regarding data privacy, integrity, and accessibility.

During Data Technology Day event, Aliyun presented its full landscape of cloud-computing products and solutions. Aliyun has developed more than 14 cloud products and 50 solutions for enterprises and individual developers across eight sectors, including gaming, multimedia, e-government, medical treatment, IoT, and finance. Additional solutions are provided by more than 200 companies partnering with Aliyun.

"The huge amount of data and advanced computing capacity has brought great business opportunities to the industry," said Wensong Zhang, Chief Technology Officer of Aliyun. "Deep learning and high-performance computing have been widely adopted in Alibaba Group for internal use. Aliyun will roll out high-performance computing services and accelerators based on GPU (Graphics Processing Unit) technology that could be applied in image recognition and deep learning to expand the boundaries of business."

The European Commission gave its stamp of approval to the proposed acquisition of Alcatel-Lucent by Nokia, saying the merger does not raise competition concerns "because the parties are not close competitors and since a number of strong global competitors will remain active after the transaction."

The Commission said it considered the effects of the merger on competition in the field of mobile network equipment, including Radio Access Network equipment and Core Network Systems. The Commission found that, despite the merged entity having combined market shares around or above 30% for several specific types of equipment, the overlaps between the two companies' activities are effectively limited. Indeed, Nokia has a strong presence in the European Economic Area, where Alcatel-Lucent is a small player, and conversely Alcatel-Lucent has a strong presence in North America, where Nokia's activities are rather limited.

The EC cited competition from Ericsson and Huawei, along with the emerging presence of ZTE and Samsung, especially with regards to upcoming 5G.

Nokia agreed to acquire Alcatel-Lucent in a deal valued at EUR 15.6 billion -- a premium to shareholders of 28% (equivalent to EUR 4.27 per share) over the unaffected weighted average share price of Alcatel-Lucent for the previous three months. Under the transaction Nokia will make an offer for all of the equity securities issued by Alcatel-Lucent, through a public exchange offer in France and in the United States, on the basis of 0.55 of a new Nokia share for every Alcatel-Lucent share. The boards of directors of both companies have agreed to the deal.

Nokia said it was motivated to do the deal because the addressable market of the combined company in 2014 was approximately 50% larger than its current addressable networks market, increasing from approximately EUR 84 billion to approximately EUR 130 billion. The combined company is expected to have a stronger growth profile than Nokia’s current addressable market, with an estimated CAGR of approximately 3.5% for 2014-2019.

Some highlights:

The combined company will be called Nokia Corporation, with headquarters in Espoo, Finland and a strong presence in France. It will also have major R&D centers in Germany, the U.S. and China. It will retain its Bell Labs brand in the U.S..

For France, Nokia said intends to maintain employment levels consistent with Alcatel-Lucent’s end-2015 Shift Plan commitments, with a particular focus on the key sites of Villarceaux (Essonne) and Lannion (Côtes d’Armor). Plans also include a 5G R&D centre of excellence in France.

Risto Siilasmaa is planned to serve as Chairman, and Rajeev Suri as Chief Executive Officer.

The combined company would target approximately EUR 900 million of operating cost synergies to be achieved on a full year basis in 2019. The cost savings will come from organizational downsizing, elimination of overlapping products and services, centralized functions and regional sales organizations. The combined company could reduce overhead costs in real estate, manufacturing, supply chains, IT and overall G&A expenses, including public company costs.

The combined company would target approximately EUR 200 million of reductions in interest expenses to be achieved on a full year basis in 2017.

For FY 2014, the combined company would have had net sales of EUR 25.9 billion, a non-IFRS operating profit of EUR 2.3 billion, a reported operating profit of EUR 0.3 billion, R&D investments of approximately EUR 4.7 billion, and a strong balance sheet with combined net cash at December 31, 2014 of EUR 7.4 billion.

For comparison in FY 2014, Ericsson had carrier revenues of approximately EUR 25.1 billion, Huawei had EUR 23.5 billion and Cisco had EUR 9.0 billion.

In China, Nokia would own Alcatel-Lucent’s 50% plus one share holding in Alcatel-Lucent Shanghai Bell, a company limited by shares supervised by the State-owned Assets Supervision and Administration Commission of China.

The point-to-point Microwave Transmission market is forecast to have near term growth, but will likely decline in the outer years, according to a new report from Dell'Oro Group. During this five-year forecast period, through 2019, Packet Microwave equipment demand is expected to maintain a positive rate of expansion.

Some highlights:

Packet Microwave revenue and radio transceivers forecast to comprise a little over 30 percent of total microwave equipment market by 2019.

“The market is moving to Packet Microwave,” said Jimmy Yu, Vice President of Microwave Transmission research at Dell’Oro Group. “We are forecasting Packet Microwave radio transceiver shipments to be approximately two and a half times greater in 2019 than they were in the past year. "Comparatively, other microwave radio shipments are expected to only be 33 percent higher. We think the main driver for Packet Microwave demand is form factor and capacity, especially as LTE mobile radio deployments move from macro to small cells. Small form factor, packet, high capacity, all-outdoor microwave units are just better suited for small cell backhaul than the older split-mount systems,” Mr. Yu added.

The global network functions virtualization (NFV) hardware, software and services market will reach $11.6 billion in 2019, up from $2.3 billion in 2015, according to new forecast from IHS .

Some highlights

Service providers are still early in the long-term, 10- to 15-year transformation to virtualized networks

Revenue from outsourced services for NFV projects is projected to grow at a 71 percent compound annual growth rate (CAGR) from 2014 to 2019

Revenue from software-only video content delivery network (CDN) functions for managing and distributing data is forecast by IHS to grow 30-fold from 2015 to 2019

“NFV represents operators’ shift from a hardware focus to software focus, and our forecasts show this. We believe NFV software will comprise over 80 percent of the $11.6 billion total NFV revenue in 2019,” said Michael Howard, senior research director for carrier networks at IHS. “The software is always a much larger investment than the server, storage and switch hardware, representing about $4 of every $5 spent on NFV.”

Thursday, July 23, 2015

Intel is rolling out a new "Cloud for All" initiative to accelerate cloud adoption by making public, private and hybrid cloud solutions easier to deploy. The plan calls for a series of investments and collaborations in the cloud software ecosystem, which the company expects will lead to tens of thousands of new cloud deployments.

“The cloud has been critical to the digital services economy and has enabled tremendous innovation and business growth, but broad enterprise adoption is not happening fast enough,” said Diane Bryant, senior vice president and general manager of Intel’s Data Center Group. “We believe that through this initiative we will enable our customers to realize the benefits and innovations gained from the latest cloud computing technologies.”

Optimizing SDI solutions to deliver highly efficient clouds across a range of workloads by taking full advantage of Intel platform capabilities;

Aligning the industry and engaging the community through open industry standards, solutions and routes to market to accelerate cloud deployment.

As a key part of this initiative, Intel announced a new collaboration with Rackspace to establish an OpenStack Innovation Center to drive enterprise features and scale optimizations into the OpenStack source code. The OpenStack Innovation Center will include the world’s largest OpenStack developer cloud consisting of two 1,000-node clusters that will be available to the OpenStack community-at-large to support advanced, large-scale testing of OpenStack performance, code and new features. These testing clusters are expected to be available within the next six months.

The companies will also focus on the delivery of new enterprise features and optimizations that are aligned with the OpenStack Enterprise Working Group and community priorities. New modules of courseware will also be offered to onboard and increase the number of open source developers actively contributing to the success of the community.

In its quarterly financial update, Amazon.com announced that revenues at AWS reached $1.824 billion for the second quarter of 2015, up 81% over the $1.055 billion for Q2 2014.

Some other AWS highlights for Q2:

Amazon Web Services (AWS) announced that it will open a new region in India in 2016, which will enable customers to run workloads in India and serve Indian end-users with even better latency.

AWS announced that the EU (Frankfurt) region, which opened in October 2014, is AWS’ fastest growing international region to date.

AWS announced AWS Educate, a free program that helps educators and students use real-world cloud technology in the classroom to prepare students for the cloud workforce.

AWS entered into separate agreements to support the construction and operation of Amazon Solar Farm U.S. East and Amazon Wind Farm U.S. East. These are expected to generate approximately 170,000 megawatt hours (MWh) of solar power and 670,000 MWh of wind energy on an annual basis. The energy generated from these facilities will be delivered into the electrical grids that power both current and future AWS data centers.

AWS announced Amazon API Gateway, a new fully managed service that makes it easy for AWS customers to create, publish, maintain, monitor, and secure APIs at any scale.

AWS Device Farm is a new service that helps mobile app developers quickly and securely test their apps on smartphones, tablets, and other devices to improve the quality of their Android and Fire OS apps.

IBM has acquired Compose, a start-up offering MongoDB, Redis, Elasticsearch, PostgreSQL, and other database as a service (DBaaS) offerings targeted at web and mobile app developers. Financial terms were not disclosed.

Compose, which was founded in 2010 and is based in San Mateo, California, offers auto-scaling, production-ready databases including MongoDB, Redis, Elasticsearch, PostgreSQL and RethinkDB. The services includes 24x7 monitoring and management by DBaaS DevOps experts. Compose features:

Valuable add-ons including Compose Transporter, which helps developers move data between services like MongoDB and Elasticsearch for easier application development and to provide a better end-user experience.

IBM said its acquisition of Compose continues IBM's commitment to open source technology and communities across the entire cloud stack. In addition to this latest announcement, and the announcement to make the company's container technology available through Docker last month, IBM serves as a founding member of The Cloud Foundry and OpenStack Foundations, a platinum sponsor of the Node.js Foundation and a sponsor of the Open Container Project.

"Compose's breadth of database offerings will expand IBM's Bluemix platform for the many app developers seeking production-ready databases built on open source," said Derek Schoettle, General Manager, IBM Cloud Data Services. "Compose furthers IBM's commitment to ensuring developers have access to the right tools for the job by offering the broadest set of DBaaS service and the flexibility of hybrid cloud deployment."

Telx is joining the FASTER transpacific cable system project, which will offer an initial capacity of 60 Tbps when it enters service next year. It will connect the west coast of the U.S. to major Asian cities including Chikura and Shima in Japan.

The FASTER cable system will land in Oregon and can be accessed via a distribution Point of Presence (PoP) in Telx's PRT1 (Hillsboro, Oregon) data center, just outside of Portland. Telx's PRT1 Hillsboro data center is a carrier neutral hub for transpacific and terrestrial cable systems in the Pacific Northwest. Upon completion, FASTER will have an initial capacity of 60 Tb per second and will address the unique traffic demands for broadband and mobile content between Asia and the United States.

"We are excited to develop our relationship with the FASTER consortium through the support of this cable system. Users will be able to easily and securely interconnect their traffic at our data center in Hillsboro," said Tony Rossabi, Executive Vice President of Marketing, Strategy, and Sales, Telx. "This network infrastructure represents our commitment to the Pacific Northwest, and we look forward to persistent growth in the region."

The PRT1 data center has achieved significant growth in terms of carrier interconnectivity. Additionally, Telx has a growing presence on the west coast, with data centers located in California (LOS1, SCL1, SCL2 and SFR1) Oregon (PRT1) and Washington (SEA1).

The FASTER consortium is comprised of six parties, including China Mobile International, China Telecom Global, Global Transit, Google, KDDI and Singtel. The system is expected to begin operating during the second quarter of 2016.

NEC has been selected as the systems supplier for a new Trans-Pacific cable that will boast an initial design capacity of 60 Tbps: 100G x 100 wavelengths x 6 fiber pairs. It is believed to be the largest design capacity on this route.

The FASTER cable will connect the west coast of the United States with two landing stations in Japan. The US$300 million cable is targeted to enter service in Q2 2016.

The project is backed by a consortium of six companies: China Mobile International, China Telecom Global, Global Transit, Google, KDDI and SingTel.

Digital Realty Trust agreed to acquire Telx, a national provider of data center colocation, interconnection and cloud enablement solutions, for $1.886 billion from private equity firms ABRY Partners and Berkshire Partners.The combination is expected to double Digital Realty's footprint in the rapidly-growing colocation business, as well as provide Digital Realty customers access to a leading interconnection platform.

As of March 31, 2015, Telx managed 1.3 million square feet of data center space operating out of 20 facilities across the country, of which two are Telx-owned, 11 are leased from Digital Realty, one is partially sub-leased from Digital Realty and an unrelated third party, and six are leased from third parties. Telx's flagship facilities include its NYC1 data center at 60 Hudson Street in Manhattan, which serves as a nerve center for international communications and offers access to physical connection points to the world’s telecommunications networks and Internet backbones. Telx occupies multiple floors at 60 Hudson with interconnectivity to more than 400 carriers, financial exchanges and application, media, content, and software-as-a-service providers with just a single connection. Telx operates other NYC data centers at 111 8th Ave. and 32 Avenue of the Americas (6th Ave).As of March 31, 2015, Digital Realty's portfolio consisted of 130 properties, including 14 properties held as investments in unconsolidated joint ventures, comprised of approximately 22.1 million square feet, excluding approximately 1.2 million square feet of space under active development and 1.3 million square feet of space held for future development, located throughout North America, Europe, Asia and Australia.